But perhaps one of his greatest professional goals was elevating the finance functions at Chamberlin Edmonds between 2007 and 2008 and guiding the company through a recapitalization effort.

For his efforts, Sadler, 44, has been named Atlanta Business Chronicle’s CFO of the Year in the medium-sized private companies category.

Sadler’s career prior to Chamberlin Edmonds included being a certified public accountant at the former PriceWaterhouse in Atlanta, a workout officer for Citibank in Atlanta and New York City, managing director and CFO at private equity firm Legacy Securities Corp. and Legacy Capital Partners LLC, and president of Morningside Advisors, a crisis management firm.

Growth side

In 2005, Sadler came to Chamberlin Edmonds, finding the company was “better at growth side than profitability and liquidity side,” he says. “Those were issues CEA had in 2005 and one of the reasons I was interested in the company and they were interested in me.”

Sadler oversees the firm’s finance, accounting, legal, people service and support operations, representing about 85 of the firm’s 800 employees.

Sadler and the management team set about transforming Chamberlin Edmonds, getting its top line to double, cash flow to triple, and boosting profitability.

But the most significant change to the company was its recapitalization, says Sadler, who is also founder and partner in a small venture capital fund in Atlanta.

“It did ultimately mean a change in our shareholder group and a lot of capital put together,” Sadler says. “We switched from the venture capital world to the private equity world and had a complex set of arrangements in our structure. I orchestrated quite a lot of that.”

Sadler led the company through an ownership change and received praise from both the current and previous financial sponsors, says Allen Taylor, senior vice president at Bank of America Securities LLC, one of the judges for the CFO of the Year award.

“And he was retained as a CFO in the newly constituted company,” Taylor says.

“Many times a new company will come in and will clean house. Not with Brian. Not only does the current sponsor group feel good about him, but he also received praise from a previous financial sponsor.”

To receive praise from both sponsors “in this type of highly volatile environment is truly outstanding,” Taylor says.

Recapitalization

C. Taylor Cole Jr., partner at Charterhouse Group Inc., a New York City-based private equity firm, worked with Sadler during the recapitalization process and ultimately the ownership change.

“Any deal process weighs heavily on the CFO position,” Cole says in a nomination letter for Sadler. “This one was particularly challenging given the involvement of multiple interested buyers throughout the process, the scrutiny of multiple accounting firms engaged to conduct due diligence and the level of detail and documentation required by the capital sources, both debt and equity.”

“[Sadler was] nothing short of extremely impressive to everyone involved in these activities,” Taylor says.

As a private equity investor, Taylor has seen companies in growth mode often stress their CFOs to the breaking point, he says in the nominating letter. “Chamberlin Edmonds is in high-growth mode and Brian Sadler has shown over and over again his ability to scale up right alongside the growth in the company.”

Taylor also says Sadler ranks among the top of a lengthy list of CFOs he’s worked closely with over the past 15 years.

Sadler, who is also a triathlete, believes his experience on the public accounting side, as well as his investment banking experience and private equity experience, really prepared him for his role at Chamberlin Edmonds and its transition.

“The challenge was to manage the needs and goals of a former shareholder group with those of management that was going to stay on, and managing the new set of shareholders that would be coming in, in a fairly complex transaction,” he says.The trick was “balancing those three things out.”

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